Jeff Spring is the Finance & Markets Editor at BusinessPundit.com. He's currently spending his days backpacking across Europe. While he may be living outside of the United States, he stays connected to American financial markets and M&A's more than is probably healthy for any single person. His love of a good book and a Bloomberg terminal can't be understated. He can be reached at JeffSpringer@BusinessPundit.com

Share this post

Wall Street Trading Low As Market Reopens And NYC Recovers In The Wake Of Hurricane Sandy

As New York City scrambles to recover from the massive mess of Hurricane Sandy’s wake, trading has been tremendously low on Wall Street. Although the New York Stock Exchange reopened Wednesday afternoon following a historic two day shutdown, its recovery may slow. As Manhattan and surrounded areas weathered one of the biggest storms to ever hit the U.S., power outages, damages caused by the storm, technical troubles and the ill timed shutdown of the market on the final day of the month only compounded issues with the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

Insiders, like market strategist Mark Hogan from Lazard Capital Markets, are concerned that the market isn’t bouncing back. In a statement regarding the storm’s impact to trading, Hogan offered the Wall Street Journal his opinion (and that shared by most investors and analysts). Hogan stated that he had hoped for a “pent-up demand to make up for investments” yet market watchers “didn’t see three days of trading wrapped into one” on Wednesday. Hogan went on to attribute the low trading figures to the fact that many, if not “all the players [can’t] get back to work” due to power outages and damages caused by the storm.

Some, like chief market economist Peter Cardillo at Rockwell Global Capital, suggest that the New York Stock Exchange should have remained closed. Cardillo offered via the Wall Street Journal: “The fact is there is limited manpower, not all traders have access to trading” and perhaps the market “should have never opened up.”

Overall, Google, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel saw trade increases while others, like those in technology and electronics, slumped dramatically. Facebook, Apple, and Netflix were among the sharpest decline as prices of stock plummeted. Some experts forecast an economic storm on the horizon.